Re: GSMA Mobile Payments API

On 12/14/2016 04:52 PM, Adrian Hope-Bailie wrote:
> Interesting to compare this with the HTTP API and also consider in 
> the work being done at SWIFT re JSON and REST: 
> https://mmapi.gsma.com/

Thanks for the link AdrianHB, and for the offer to have folks working on
this API to present at a future meeting, Natasha.

I've done a very quick walk through of the spec and here are some
initial thoughts:

The Mobile Money API has more to do with SWIFT/Open Banking/PSD2 style
account management than it has to do with work the Web Payments WG is
doing. That is, the primary purpose seems to be in managing accounts,
balance, billing, debits, quotations, and other items related to sending
and receiving money via a mobile phone. At the risk of being overly
broad, replace "mobile phone" with "bank account" and you have the
general thrust of some of what the Open Banking APIs and PSD2 are going
after wrt. JSON and REST.

The Web Payments HTTP API and the Mobile Money API overlap in the
following ways:

* Bills API
* Bill Payments API
* Quotations API

The Bill Payment API is far simpler (in a good way) than what we have
created for the PaymentRequest object. The former being focused just on
the payment amount (like the Web Payments CG proposal) while the latter
is focused more on ecommerce scenarios (aka PaymentRequest API). What
we're doing in the Web Payments WG is a combination of the Bill Payments
API and bits and pieces of the Quotations API. Where the GSMA approach
is more modular and encompassing, the Web Payments WG approach is more
monolithic and focused.

We will certainly pull this information in when doing the next revision
of the Web Payments HTTP API, but seeing the desire and emergence of
other HTTP-based payment APIs -- Mobile Money HTTP API, Open Banking
HTTP API, and SWIFT HTTP API -- I hope it's becoming increasingly
apparent to folks why having an HTTP API is an important part of the
ecosystem.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Rebalancing How the Web is Built
http://manu.sporny.org/2016/rebalancing/

Received on Thursday, 15 December 2016 16:29:22 UTC